John T. Oliver

John T. Oliver is Information Literacy Librarian at The College of New Jersey. As the professor of a mandatory library skills and academic research course for all of the College’s 1,800+ first year students, he works to understand, support, and develop students’ use of information.

John is interested in facilitating authentic contexts for teaching students to identify, evaluate, access, and use information for specific purposes (especially–but not exclusively–in writing). In an effort to support self-directed information seeking and research-skills learning, he researches high-impact design features and teaching approaches within digital learning objects and multimedia interactions. He is also interested in finding (and using) robust but simple assessments for measuring learners’ information skills. Using data from his mandatory library skills course, he explores which research skills and concepts students readily understand and which ones they struggle to grasp.

He received his Master of Library and Information Science degree from Rutgers (2006) and, more recently, a Master of Arts in Cognitive Studies in Education from Teachers College, Columbia University (2011).

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Director of Educational and Emerging Technologies in the Division of Information Technology Services, SUNY Empire State College Kirk McDermid (Assistant Professor of Philosophy) received his Ph.D. from the University of Western Ontario. He has published Read more…